


December

by neichan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, The Hale Pack - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neichan/pseuds/neichan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles takes a short cut through the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	December

The average American grey wolf is at most 110-120 pounds, and that was a big male. Those were the most common wolf in North America. There haven’t been any in California for fifty years. It was quite a story, a headliner in fact, when one was seen migrating in and out of far northern California for several months. The authorities got out a very stern warning to hunters that the animal was protected. It left California alive.

But. There was a wolf standing not ten yards away from Stiles right now. And it wasn’t no 110 pound shrimp of a wolf, either. Nope, 200 pounds would be low balling the weight of this monster. Stiles’ brain came up with a name. Dire wolf. Extinct, prehistoric megafauna. Heavy boned. Those shoulders, that chest, this animal was strong. Big. He’d thought that before, right? But damn. It was BIG. Maybe even too big to be a Dire wolf, if they weren’t extinct. 

The red flash of eyes was not reassuring. Stiles could see the shaking of the light coming from his phone, because, yeah, he was scared just about shitless, as in losing his shit any minute now. The teeth he can see are massive, the canines that glint whitely are at least six inches long and no one in their right mind would even try to describe them as dainty. 

The fur is thick, a grey brindled black, with a heavy ruff protecting the wolf’s neck. Just in case anything was stupid enough to attack it. Its paws had to be the size of dinner plates. With long gleaming claws. 

Stiles sees all of this in the space of seconds. 

He realizes he is going to die. Here out in the woods alone. He just hopes his father survives his death. But what is the likelihood of that? The thought is enough. Stiles’ muscles unfreeze. He takes a cautious step backwards. A step closer to his disabled Jeep. He’d thought that cutting through the woods and back to town would get him more bars. Then he could call for a tow. Not his best idea ever.

It isn’t until the fourth step that the wolf reacts. In an oddly human way the wolf looks behind Stiles. And Stiles, somehow falls for it. Only, when he glances back, the wolf doesn’t rush forward and rip his throat out with its teeth. But that is only because there is another wolf there already. Close enough that Stiles can see this one is black and brown. It’s eyes are an intense, bizarre blue, and they glow as if lit from within. But that has to be a reflection from his phone. It has to be.

The wolf stares at him. Stiles stares back. He can feel his heart racing, insanely fast, faster than is possible. Then a movement to his right catches his eye, there is a third wolf, smaller (which is a relative term in this case), with a longer, finer face, a female, his brain supplies. And a fourth, a fifth, and one that is very small, a cub, pale grey, eyes gilt with gold, as it gambols nearer. Until a seventh wolf heads it off. Stiles begins to shake. He can’t get through them, there are so many. They stare at him, into his eyes. He sinks to the ground. The wolf that steps up to him smells of smoke, the sharp acidic tang of it distinctly there. They all smell of it, faintly, as they crowd closer, brushing over and around him. He closes his eyes.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@

The huge wolf tilts his head back and looks up at the silver/grey orb of the full moon. A bright disc, cool and icy in this winter sky. Stiles watches as the great head tilts back, further, further, throat stretched long and powerful, until the moist black nose points to the sky. The howl is eerie, it ripples across Stiles skin like blue-white ice scudding over a near frozen lake. He shivers. 

The second howl is deeper, bass, the alpha joining in from nearby. And then others, some deep, some like the song of coyotes, higher, sweeter to his ear. Stiles has to look, has to find the ebony shadow as it stops in the trees, worshipping the moon. Then the shadow is on the move. More coming with it. Fast, so beautifully, gorgeously fast as they run to him, engulf him. 

Stiles feels the rough fur brush his hand, both his hands, weight impacting carefully up higher, a head butting his shoulder. His thigh, his knee, his chest. A paw steps on his foot, careful, not crushing. A hush falls after the howl, as the moonlight bleeds down. 

It is there. He sees it coming. Thin at first, a tentative finger of fog, growing, multiplying into a glowing, shifting foam covering the land, moving like a cloud over the floor of the forest. It is here. Stiles steps into it, embraces it, turns with it, and he runs. 

The wind is with him, at his back and all around him. He runs. The tattered edges of his shirt flaps in it, his sneakers fly over the pine bristles that cover the ground, the shreds of his jeans now no longer than his knees. He doesn’t notice. There is no ice, no chill. He runs.

He passes by the rusted out frame of a once baby-blue Jeep. Its tires have long since been torn to shreds, rotting as they hang from dented rims, it lays on its side hidden from the road deep in the ditch, half crushed by the tree that had fallen decades ago. Glass litters the ground, mostly buried now, like thousands of tiny diamonds they catch the cold light. He’s been this way before, he’ll come this way again. 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

The man who meets the nervous family when they stop by the Sheriff’s Department is perhaps 60, maybe older. He beckons them into his office. It is still early, but they notice he has a tupperware container open on his desk. Maybe it is his breakfast or perhaps a very early lunch. It is filled with fresh cut fruit, a fork spearing a wedge of cantaloupe. His smile is soft, his eyes understanding. His skin is weathered, lined, his short hair all gone grey, but still thick, his waist is trim, his whole frame slender and healthy.

They show him the poorly focused photos, explain what they saw last night coming out of the fog, movement is all that anyone can see in the pictures that are never focused. He listens. Looks at the pictures they show him, hears the ghostly calls of wolves howling they recorded, an entire pack, there are no longer any high pitched yips, no cubs learning. He tries to remember when that had changed, and can’t. Then he reaches toward a frame on his desk, turns it, so that they can all see. 

The boy in the photographs is the same. He is laughing. His amber-brown eyes sparkle with mischievous delight. 

Excited they point, exclaim, yes that is the boy they saw. OMG! It's him! They marvel.

Then, the sheriff gently tells them the boy is his son. His son who disappeared nearly twenty years ago, vanishing after a night out with high school friends. And that every year since someone has come in with pictures like theirs, audio like theirs, with a story like theirs. Of the boy they see in the woods, running through the fog with many, great, impossibly large wolves all around him, leaping high. Though there are no wolves in California and haven’t been in more than seventy years.

nei


End file.
